2.  The cash sent to the frontiers occasions a vacuum in the trading towns, which requires a new supply.  Let us examine what are the calls for money to the frontiers.  Not for clothing, tents, ammunition, arms, which are all bought in the trading towns.  Not for provisions; for although these are bought partly in the intermediate country, bank-bills are more acceptable there than even in the trading towns.  The pay of the army calls for some cash; but not a great deal, as bank-notes are as acceptable with the military men, perhaps more so; and what cash is sent must find its way back again, in exchange for the wants of the upper from the lower country.  For we are not to suppose that cash stays accumulating there for ever.

3.  This scarcity has been occasioned by the late loans.  But does the government borrow money to keep it in their coffers?  Is it not instantly restored to circulation by payment for its necessary supplies?  And are we to restore a vacuum of twenty millions of dollars by an emission of ninety millions?

4.  The want of medium is proved by the recurrence of individuals with good paper to brokers at exorbitant interest; and

5.  By the numerous applications to the State governments for additional banks; New York wanting eighteen millions, Pennsylvania ten millions, &c.  But say more correctly, the speculators and spendthrifts of New York and Pennsylvania, but never consider them as being the States of New York and Pennsylvania.  These two items shall be considered together.

It is a litigated question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie, is a good or an evil.  In the opinion of England and of English writers it is a good; in that of all other nations it is an evil; and excepting England and her copyist, the United States, there is not a nation existing, I believe, which tolerates a paper circulation.  The experiment is going on, however, desperately in England, pretty boldly with us, and at the end of the chapter, we shall see which opinion experience approves:  for I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.  In the mean time, however, let us reason on this new call for a national bank.

After the solemn decision of Congress against the renewal of the charter of the bank of the United States, and the grounds of that decision (the want of constitutional power), I had imagined that question at rest, and that no more applications would be made to them for the incorporation of banks.  The opposition on that ground to its first establishment, the small majority by which it was overborne, and the means practised for obtaining it, cannot be already forgotten.  The law having passed, however, by a majority, its opponents, true to the sacred principle of submission to a majority, suffered the law to flow through its term without obstruction.  During this, the nation had time to consider the constitutional question, and when the renewal was proposed, they condemned it, not by their representatives in Congress only, but by express instructions from different organs of their will.  Here then we might stop, and consider the memorial as answered.  But, setting authority apart, we will examine whether the legislature ought to comply with it, even if they had the power.